Different Types of Security

Work belongs to Dan Qutaishat, this work can be referenced by using any of the established referencing methods such as Harvard.

Information security is needed because businesses have information that is valuable (confidentiality). That implements integrity and availability.

Software security is important to ensure it is not susceptible to modification and deletion.

Data security is important to make there no unauthorized actions are done against assets which are important to the company. The content as a safeguard should be stored on company’s databases.

Network security is protecting the infrastructure used to conduct business, some threats to this are: denial of service/access and information theft. But management of this issue can become quite complex especially as the scalability increases because there becomes more network nodes which are distributed worldwide.

Physical security is protecting the actual infrastructure itself e.g., servers, buildings…

Threats to security can occur from different sources such as hackers and hacktivists.

There are a set of attacks that can occur which are un-targeted, these do not who they impact and are cast over a wide net. Examples of this are:

-       Phishing: sending emails to many people in hopes someone clicks it.

-       Water holing: making a fake website to exploit people.

-       Ransomware: encrypt a device and charge to regain access.

-       Scanning: completing network scans to find vulnerabilities.

As there are untargeted attacks, there are also targeted ones, examples of targeted attacks are:

-       Spear-phishing: sending emails to certain people with malicious intent.

-       Botnets: to shut down infrastructure, a collection of PCs are compromised and controlled by the attacker remotely.

-       Damage to key infrastructure to subvert the supply chain.

Insider threat: Anyone who has authorized access to the system can potentially harm it. These can include ex-employees for instance if they still had access. This often leads to human error which is seen as the most common cause of data breaches.

Threat vectors: routes taken to get past defenses and cause harm e.g., how a hacker gets access to a system and causes the attack.

There are four stages of an attack (controls are necessary for each stage):

1.     Survey

2.     Delivery

3.     Breach

4.     Affect

Unfortunately, there are a set of constraints against information security:

-       Operational constraints e.g., slow access to information.

-       Financial constraints e.g., if it is pricey.

-       Cultural constraints e.g., if there is risk ignorance.

A security policy that is sometimes followed is security through obfuscation which is when there is a reliance on design secrecy to protect key assets e.g., if the attacker does not know the location of the data, they cannot do any harm. It’s not a good choice for a security assurance strategy as it assumes attacks are not that clever.

The types of responses tend to be easily classified between 2 categories: reactive or proactive.

Challenges that can be faced are:

-       Corporate attitude may not be sufficient.

-       Increased globalization rapidly changes business environment.

-       Understanding business need and security requirements.

-       It should not go against the enterprise’s culture.

-       Balancing cost and security impact.

Information assurance is the practice of implementing e.g., a series of policies to protect the CIA triad, authenticity, and non-repudiation of user data.